Monday, July 25, 2011

I'm as shocked as most other people are at the fact that there are people in our midst who could be so socially alienated that they could justify the killing of scores of young people on the basis that they are politically progressive. Equally shocking is the scale of this slaughter.

The nature of this event reminds me both of Oklahoma City and Columbine, which have their similarities in nature and their differences.

Every time a Columbine-style massacre takes place in the US, almost always carried out by a young white man who resents females and other targets, whose targets are always primarily young, I wonder if we are somehow going to come to terms with the extent to which our society is flawed, how much social alienation is becoming increasingly rampant, how so many people feel left out, bullied, side-tracked -- while at the same time feeling like they deserve better. These damaged people -- who usually made unobtrusive, normal-seeming neighbors until they went to school with a machine gun one day -- then seek out a way to put their feelings of alienation into some kind of context.

Too often they find it in the form of rightwing, Christian ideologies that systematically dehumanize whole ethnic groups and anybody who believes in an inclusive, multicultural, egalitarian society. And while everybody and their mother is, of course, denouncing the actions of this Norwegian sociopath just as they denounced Timothy McVeigh and Dylan Klebold before him, "mainstream" conservatives as well as ostensibly more progressive parties throughout Europe, North America and elsewhere talk openly about the "failure of multiculturalism" and of Europe's grand Christian traditions.

The rise of the Right on both sides of the Atlantic has been fuelled by duplicitous politicians and corporate interests who have been appealing to the progressive nature of most people with talk of one big European family, while they implement policies which result in the further impoverishment of much of eastern Europe, continuing de-industrialization Europe east and west (and North America), combined with a flood of immigrants coming from places where job prospects are even more grim (such as eastern Europe, North Africa, Mexico, etc.) or from places that have been destroyed by European and North American foreign policy, such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Then the political elite blames the socioeconomic situation they have created on their victims, talking about the failure of multiculturalism, urban crime, welfare cheats, lazy workers, corrupt unions, etc. And they find lots of ways of saying we were all better off when society was whiter and more moral.

Of course, the big news is that society was never more moral, only more divided and stratified, before unions and multiculturalism. And Europe has never been white nor Christian. Jews got there way before Christ did, and the pagans long predated the Jews. Muslims have been there since the days of Mohammed.

On the one hand I think it's important to emphasize that this guy is an extreme sociopath, at least according to my definition of the word. But equally, I think it's important to note that xenophobes who make all sorts of wild and inaccurate generalizations about Muslims and progressives are very easy to find throughout Europe, throughout society, from the streets to the halls of power in Berlin, Paris, and London as well as Stockholm, Copenhagen and Oslo, and this is not at all helpful in preventing the next massacre.

It is not just the extreme right that needs to understand that, far from representing more advanced civilizations than the societies from which many of the immigrants are coming, Europe is, and has long been, a troubled place. The right rejects multiculturalism and always has. Many progressive people in Europe and North America talk about "tolerance" and inclusiveness as if these are traditional European values. Of course, for many Europeans, they are.

But the history of Europeans actively rejecting an inclusive, open society is long and terrible in a way that is still unparalleled on our troubled planet. While a multiplicity of ethnic, linguistic and religious groups were living together comparatively peaceably for centuries of Ottoman rule, in Europe the inquisitors and crusaders were slaughtering their fellow Europeans for not ascribing to the right set of beliefs. While Jews were fleeing the pogroms in Europe, their counterparts throughout the Muslim world were prospering. And then decades later came the Nazi Holocaust, when a man very much like Anders Breivik was running an empire, with lots of little Anders Breiviks doing his bidding, using gas chambers along with their machine guns.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

It is often said of topical songwriters that we are just using music as a vehicle for our political rantings. Well here's the proof -- actual slogans set to music that you can wear on your website or post on your Facebook page! Kind of like a button you'd wear on your shirt (blouse, hat, etc.) to make a statement, but it's digital and it sings...

Some samples are below. Click "play" on any button and after a little while you'll see the link to get the URL to post on Facebook and the code needed to embed that one on a website. Don't see the button you're looking for? Email me and maybe I've got just what want... (Or maybe not, but I'd love to hear from you anyway.)

Here's one for my dear departed friend and comrade, Bob Steck, who was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War.

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Here's how we can fix the US economy...

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Stop jailing whistleblowers! They are heroes, not criminals! Long live Wikileaks!

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Here is my summary of Obama's administration up to now anyway...

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And what do we say to hydraulic fracturing...?

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And our response to the union-busting politicians who seem to be running much of the USA these days?

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On August 20th, 1993, every seaworthy vessel in the town of Cordova, Alaska, participated in the blockade of Prince William Sound. No more oil spills!

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In 1941 a Japanese diplomat risked his life to save the lives of possibly as many as 10,000 eastern European Jews.

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Did your kids come home from college with Portland Syndrome? This is for them.

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Last I checked, the equivalent in explosive power of one Hiroshima bomb every week is being used to devastate West Virginia's once-beautiful mountains.

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It is mass movements that make history. In the case of the defeat of the forces of slavery in the USA, the abolitionist movement was central -- both the pacifist and the armed wings of the movement...

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Sometimes before you can build it up you've got to...

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All aboard the Mavi Marmara! End the blockade!

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Remember the hunger strikers and MP Francis Hughes!

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What if Santa joined the pirates...?

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A flag known to any Australian as that of the 1854 miners' rebellion known as the Eureka Stockade.

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Brad Will, friend and Indymedia activist, among other things, killed by the paramilitaries while on the front lines of the rebellion in Oaxaca, Mexico in 2006, with a camera in his hand.

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There have been many September 11ths. One of the most well-known, at least until recently, was the CIA-backed rightwing coup that overthrew the popularly-elected socialist Salvador Allende and sent Chile into years of brutal dictatorship.

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And the question for all Christians who support spending a trillion dollars on the military every year...

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One for the pirates... (The adult version, more or less...)

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And a pirate song for the kids (and others)...

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Legalize it!

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One for the Irishmen who deserted from the US Army and joined the Mexican Army during the US invasion of Mexico in the 1840's...

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Down with the Apartheid Wall! (And a lot of other walls as well...)

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Something that one should always bear in mind, in spite of it all...

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Why not pollute the air, water and land with toxic chemicals and radioactive waste? Among other good reasons...

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A kiss behind the barricades... (I know it may have been something else, but it's still a nice photo anyway.)

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I've been a punk rock baby since the day that I was born! (From my children's recording, Har Har Har!)

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What do we do about the bullies? Organize! Together...

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Long live the Bolivarian Revolution!

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Yes, they can have freedom and democracy. After we torture our prisoners...

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International law? What's that?

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The place where the greatest battle in the Labor Wars of the US was fought, Blair Mountain, is slated to be destroyed for coal-mining.

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If there were truth in advertising, this would be proudly displayed on Coca-Cola's website...